Best Bits: The Night Tour With Tracie "The Bug Lady"

In an attempt to knock out two birds with one stone, I am going to discuss my brief encounter with Costa Rica while also beginning what I hope will be a long series on my favorite parts of travel from all over the world.  The "Best Bits" series will highlight my favorite restaurants, accommodations, museums, tours, buildings, coffee shops, etc etc from my various travels.

Tracie and Gian not only find the smallest, neatest creatures
(like this glass frog), but they also helpfully
arrange picture-taking and closer looks.

For this installment, I'd like to talk about the part of my Costa Rican trip that I've been ranting and raving about ever since I experienced it.  But it's also the part of my trip that everyone probably overlooks as something I found awesome, but they might not enjoy.  'Bugs and snakes and other creepy crawlies late at night in Costa Rica?  No thanks,' is probably what you're thinking.  But no!  The Night Tour with Tracie "The Bug Lady" is seriously one of the most unmissable and under-priced tours I have ever heard of.

Every night in Drake Bay, Costa Rica - an area on the Osa Peninsula, hours to the southwest of the capital and center of the country - Tracie and Gianfranco team up to show you a side of Costa Rica that would otherwise require a botany degree and years of patience to discover.  You gather together as a group of maybe a dozen tour-goers after the sun goes down, where they provide you with headlamps, and the tour immediately begins as they start showing you the unseen life all around you.  Within minutes we had already seen several sleeping, seemingly-invisible lizards and iguanas and Gian walked us down an embankment to see a gigantic, dirt-colored Smoky Jungle frog.

Who Needs Seatbelts?

My life in Cairo would not have been the same if I didn't ride a microbus three times a week. So, Fernando and I have decided to recount some of our most exciting microbus experiences here, to make sure we never forget how much fun it is to ride a microbus in Cairo.

I documented our first few adventures on the official blog a few weeks ago, recalling the first time when we didn't understand how paying our bus fare worked, and my arms getting a lot of attention as the guy in front of me wouldn't stop staring at them.

We certainly can't forget the pimped-out party bus we got on once, with its blue lights, fringed dashboard, red-tinted ceiling lights and serious bass which shook the seats. Or the time we drove by what appeared to be part of a wedding procession, where one of the cars had a grid of Christmas lights covering the windshield. Or Fernando getting so crammed between me and a random lady that he had to hold himself up using the seat in front of him so he wouldn't squish her. That ride was the same one where a man turned and chastised me for cracking my knuckles, using a combination of Arabic, English and French. Or the time when the seat in front of Fernando had this strange, basketball-sized growth that was looming onto his seat. Or the two guys who jumped on the back bumper of our bus and free-rode for a little while.

A Man's Mall

So, while our relatively easy weekend was relaxing and totally necessary, all of us were ready to do something by the time this afternoon rolled around. So while some decided to go to a movie (in Arabic this time, not just with subtitles), I was among the group that felt a little more restless and didn't want to just go and sit in some theater. So Zuri, Fernando and I decided to try to find this art gallery mentioned in one of the guidebooks that has been sitting on our dining room table.

After poring over the map a bit, we figured out generally where the gallery was and headed over, getting helpful tips from a random Egyptian who assumed we were clueless tourists trying to get to the Egyptian Museum and getting dragged into a store when some of us tried to just buy a few post cards. Poor Zuri and Fernando just put up with it - they can both pass for Egyptian, but I'm pretty sure I'm the one that gives them away. But we found all the right streets and saw a sign and figured out which stairs to go up and discovered that the gallery...

The Initial Introduction, The First Class

So yesterday was a milestone for us DukeEngagers - the first day at our St. Andrew's sites. Let me sum up my Monday: I left for Ana al-Misri at 8:30 in the morning, and, besides the 1 hour break between Ana al-Misri and my St. Andrew's site, did not return until 9 at night. Ana al-Misri was much less stressful than that first day, but was still draining. And, it's about an hour drive from here, past the pyramids (yeah, that never gets old). But I was in art again, and most of my time was spent with only a few younger kids who taught me the colors in amiya and took turns picking colors for me to use as I was drawing. I'm going to really enjoy my time there, I think!

But on to the new stuff. The first day was... exciting and intimidating and absolutely rad. We had twenty students come to register, some of whom were not on our list (which was expected), and which was many more than went to the other sites. Fernando and I had not planned a lesson, since we had no idea to expect, so we just chilled in our classroom, did some brief introductions, let them ask us questions, and explained our expectations for the class and how it was gonna work. We came back that night very tired, but super excited.